Portlanders have a passion for pickling

Katie and Jesse Hancock were looking for the perfect place to launch their pickle business. Living in Sandpoint, Idaho, where produce at the local Walmart was hardly inspirational, they realized they had to pack up and move. The question was, where?

They embarked on some pickle tourism, traveling from one coast of the country to the other. They browsed through Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket and sampled the offerings of popular new pickle concerns (Rick’s Picks, Wheelhouse, Brooklyn Brine), part of the “pickle renaissance” of Brooklyn.

In contrast to the bustling Brooklyn scene, the Pacific Northwest commercial pickling landscape was nearly bare. Longtime Portland pickle companies Steinfeld’s and Mrs. Neusihin’s had long since been sold to a Wisconsin company. And, although the brands still lived on, the cukes in those familiar jars came not from the Willamette Valley but from fields as far away as India.

Randy L. RasmussenJessie and Katie Hancock scoured the country to find the right place to start their pickling business. Portland was the winner, with its access to fabulous fresh produce -- which can now be found, bathed in spiced vinegar, in jars of Unbound Pickling's wares, sold at farmers markets and in local stores.

Visiting Portland, the Hancocks were overwhelmed by the quantity and variety of local veggies. They saw that the Willamette Valley was just crying out to be pickled — and their choice for their business location was a no-brainer.

“Portland was the logical choice,” says Jesse Hancock, “because of the produce.”
In August 2009, after three years of research and recipe testing, the Hancocks introduced their Unbound Pickling wares at Portland farmers markets and grocery stores. Their inventory includes about half a dozen varieties of pickled vegetables, including their pièce de résistance, the bacon pickle. They were the first local company in years to offer commercially canned pickled produce from local fields. But were they the only picklers in town?

Hardly.

IN PORTLAND, where a DIY sensibility and a passion for all that’s good and local intersect in many wondrous ways, a widespread passion for pickling had taken over the town. The passion was expressed more through individual kitchen craft than business enterprise, however.

That couldn’t have been more obvious than at the first Fermentation Festival in August 2009, which bubbled onto the scene around the same time that Unbound Pickling’s first jars started rolling off the production line.

The festival was the brainchild of pickle maven David Barber. Along with his wife, Barbara, he reigns over what he calls “the Kingdom of Brine,” curing and selling kosher pickles to restaurants, food carts and grocers under the label Picklopolis. The Barbers also own Three Square Grill in Hillsdale, where David is chef.

Randy L. RasmussenPickling has been a passion for David Barber, chef/owner of Three Square Grill in Hillsdale and the reigning monarch of what he calls "The Kingdom of Brine." Barber's pickles include naturally fermented garlic dill pickles as well as vinegar-brined treats such as orange and fennel flavored organic beets.

Several fellow fermenters helped Barber organize the first festival. One of them was writer and kraut fanatic George Winborn, who claims membership in a group called the Crock Cooperative. During the growing season, they meet often to create communal batches of hot vinegar brine pickles and sauerkraut that’s fermented in the salted cabbage’s own liquid.

“We were expecting 50 to 75 people,” Winborn says of the first Fermentation Festival, “but we got 500.” Even Winborn, who would seem to have his finger on the pulse of Portland pickling, was blown away by the sheer number of enthusiasts stuffed into the Ecotrust conference center like cabbage in a crock. Part of the draw was the appearance of Sandor Ellix Katz, a Tennessee-based fermentation guru and author of “Wild Fermentation.” But even his exalted presence couldn’t fully account for the immense sour-seeking crowd. The fact of the matter is that Portland pickles.

Chefs do it, grandmas do it, even college students with secondhand crocks do it. They’re using family recipes or their own creations, old-country classics or ancient methods from Asia. Whatever the source, a pickle on the side — or even a pickle platter — is now a given in most Portland restaurants.

Pickling is a method of food preservation that dates back to when recipes, if they existed, were etched in cuneiform. Then and now, it’s a way to extend the harvest, to be able to enjoy crisp and tasty produce long after the growing season, as well as to keep proteins, such as meat, fish and eggs, from spoiling. The truly time-tested method is fermentation, whereby fresh food is immersed for weeks or months in a salty brine. Vinegar pickles are known to have been introduced by Romans wherever the empire extended.

As the ancients knew, and every home cook should heed, fundamental recipes should not be altered. Precise ratios exist for a reason: food safety. Never put out a welcome mat for botulism by being lax. Check fermented foods often for signs of mold or spoilage. And follow established guidelines for canning.

Randy L. RasmussenPickling for home use and pickling for the public are two different things, a fact that Ben Meyer and Jason French quickly learned when they started serving pickles at Ned Ludd. A "quick pickle" -- which uses vinegar mostly as a flavoring rather than as a true preservative, and which is kept in the fridge -- is cool with the health department, but true preserved pickles need special training and approval.

GETTING TIPS from experienced picklers is a good idea, too. Ethan Powell and Tobias Hogan, owners of EaT: An Oyster Bar, fill the bill for that. Both have been pickling and canning since their boyhoods in Arkansas and Eugene, respectively. Powell even had his own child-sized garden, where he grew okra, peppers and tomatoes.

“I’d get kinda made fun of as a kid,” he says.

The fruits of their pickling labor are displayed in an appetizing still-life spread on a wide shelf above the kitchen’s order window. Multiple canning jars, containing a plethora of produce, are lined up in neat rows. Every Sunday morning, a number of those jars are opened and their contents spilled into containers for the Sunday brunch Bloody Mary bar.

That first pickle plate, festooned with a variety of pickles that Ben Meyer learned how to preserve back in Indiana at his grandmother’s knee, was a huge hit — until Meyer and French learned that it was a violation of state law. Serving preserved pickles requires completion of a food processing course, such as those at Oregon State University, and recipe approval.

The two underwent a sudden conversion to quick pickling. Now they create flavorful vinegar brines and let the fruit and vegetables sit refrigerated in the brines for several days. They create a different brine for each type of produce, including strawberries, cherries, mushrooms, red onions, chard stems, celery and cucumbers. Their pickle plate, featuring five to seven varieties, is as big a hit as ever. An added bonus: Ned Ludd’s bartender artfully works the pickling liquids into some very tasty cocktails.

AT FOSTER BURGER, it was co-founder Daniel Mondok who made sure pickles were on the menu from Day One. At his previous restaurant, Sel Gris, he had been known for pickling just about anything, including octopus. Lauren Gunderson took over the pickling from Mondok at Foster Burger, using his pickling principles as a foundation but branching out on her own to add new flavors and product.

Gunderson, formerly the chef at the defunct Alberta Street Oyster Bar, uses a hot vinegar-salted water base to which she adds flavor combinations that complement the added vegetable or fruit. After the brine cools to room temperature, she refrigerates the container at least overnight before serving the pickles.

For pickled pineapple, for example, she adds cardamom, cinnamon sticks, cloves and star anise to the brine. “We finish it off with just a little bit of soda water,” she says. “You have the acidic with the sweet of all those spices, and then you get a little bit of pop from the soda water.”

Nearly every day at Foster Burger is a pickling day, says Gunderson. Pickles of all sorts are held in the refrigerator for just two weeks — if they last that long. The pickle plate, with an array of eight or more varieties, is a popular menu choice.

GABE ROSEN, chef/owner of the Japanese pub, Biwa, is understandably into Japanese pickles. As he learned while working on his degree in Japanese studies from Portland State University, the Japanese love pickles of all sorts and eat them at every meal. Rosen uses a variety of mediums common in Japanese pickling, including a bed of rice bran (nuka) in which vegetables, such as daikon radishes, are buried for a day or two, then rinsed off and served as tasty pickles; fermented soybean paste (miso) and the liquid byproducts of tofu (okara) and sake (kasu). Rosen says he likes to pickle scallops and garlic in miso. He adds salt and beer to okara, in which he pickles vegetables. For pickling fish, he mixes kasu with vinegar.

Rosen always has plenty of kimchi on hand, too. He ferments the spicy Korean-style sauerkraut by the 35-pound bucketload.

Randy L. RasmussenThe food at Navarre comes almost entirely froma local farm via a CSA box, so chef John Taboada has learned to preserve what he doesn't immediately serve, including unlikely vegetables such as kale and broccoli raab.

JOHN TABOADA, chef at Navarre, has seen his pickling preferences change since he started pickling as a college student. Now it’s all about practicality.

“Before, it was whimsy-based,” he says. “I’d go to the market or the grocery store and figure out what I wanted, buy it and make pickles.”

But now he has a farmer who regularly delivers a great abundance of beautiful produce to the restaurant. “And now it’s this terrifying attempt not to waste all the hard work that the farmer did,” Taboada says. “Basically, everything my farmer has grown in her field, we have pickled, from green beans to things I never thought to pickle, like raab and kale, and every fruit she’s ever grown.”

And no fancy flavors for this chef. He’ll take down a jar of pickles when the mood hits him to add pickles to a dish. Because he uses his pickles as ingredients, he prefers a clean slate.

For a long time, Picklopolis’ David Barber felt that he was nearly alone in insisting on high-quality pickles. “People’s expectation of a pickle over the years had really dropped,” he says. Now he’s heartened to see that pickling is once again alive and well in Portland.

“Now we have enough talented people and they have the same curiosity that I had about learning how to do it,” says the self-proclaimed King of Brine. “Now there’s a lot of really good stuff out there.”

In a nonreactive pot, bring to a boil the water, vinegar and salt. Whisk the brine mixture to ensure that the salt dissolves and evenly distributes. Pour the brine mixture into the jar filled with beans, leaving ½ inch headspace. Wipe the top edge of the jar and put a clean lid on jar and tighten (do not over-tighten).

Heat water in a canner until it reaches 212 degrees F. Place the filled jar into the canner. Ensure that water covers the jar by at least 1 inch. Boil the jar for 10 minutes in the boiling water bath.

Remove the jar, gently transfer it to a rack and let it sit undisturbed until fully cooled. The lid should pop down as the vacuum is formed; test the lid to make sure the seal is good.

Store the sealed jar in a cool, dry place for at least 3 to 4 weeks to allow flavors to develop before eating. (If your jar doesn’t seal, store in the refrigerator as it cures.)
Refrigerate after opening.

– Jesse and Katie Hancock,

Randy L. Rasmussen

Quick-Brined Garlic Dill PicklesMakes 1 pound pickles

Start with:

1 pound medium pickling cucumbers

Wash cucumbers well and trim 1⁄8 inch off the flower end. (The enzymes in the flower inhibit crisping during the curing process.) Put them in a heatproof container, jar or food-grade plastic tub.

Add:

10 black peppercorns

2 bay leaves

10 fennel seeds

1 dill head or dry dill seed

1 pinch dry dill leaf

1/4 cinnamon stick

1 clove

1 pinch nutmeg

1 pinch chile flakes

4 sliced cloves of garlic

Place in a 2-quart pot:

1 1/2 cups cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup pickling or kosher salt

Bring to a boil. Pour onto cucumber-spice mix to cover.

Let cool to room temperature. Put in refrigerator. DO NOT PUT THE LID ON UNTIL COLD. They will taste pickley in 1 day (especially if you first quarter the cukes lengthwise). They will be great in a week. Awesome in two weeks. They will keep for a long time, in the fridge.

Combine the vinegar, sugar and salt in a nonreactive saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat.

Put a garlic clove into each of three pint Mason jars. Pack the peppers loosely in the jars. Pour the hot liquid over the peppers, leaving ½-inch headspace. Run a narrow spatula around the inside edge of each jar to release any bubbles and then add a little more of the liquid if needed. Close the jars with two-piece caps. Process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath, or immerse them for 30 minutes in water heated to 180 to 185 degrees.

Store the cooled jars in a cool, dry, dark place for at least three weeks before eating the peppers. After opening a jar, store it in the refrigerator.

— Linda Ziedrich, “The Joy of Pickling”

Finding Pickle Paraphernalia

Mike Snyder works from his Southeast Portland home filling orders for healthful diet equipment. His own creation, a 1-gallon glass jar for fermenting pickles, sauerkraut and kimchi, is the best-seller at $25. 503-771-3904

Mirador Community Store carries lots of pickleware, including the pickle lovers’ dream crock from Germany, by Harsch. Complete with weighting stones, the stoneware crocks range from 5 to 10 liters capacity, and cost from $139 to $159. 2106 S.E. Division St.; 503-231-5175

F.H. Steinbart Co. sells food-grade plastic buckets from 2 to 44 gallons that can double as crocks ($5.95 to $79.95), as well as several sizes of ceramic crocks. 234 S.E. 12th Ave.; 503-232-8793

The Joy of Pickling, by Linda Ziedrich ($18.95). This is the pickler’s bible, by a Scio author, with 250 recipes.

Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz ($25). The Tennessee author tells how to make pickles, sauerkraut and other fermented foods.

Portland's Pickling Past

The Oregonian, 1966Sarah Neusihin

Locals who recall the colorful old South Portland neighborhood — before urban renewal made it into a concrete, vertical neighborhood — can perhaps tell stories of dipping for a pickle into a wooden, brine-filled barrel at the corner grocer’s. Jewish immigrants used their family recipes from Central and Eastern Europe to furnish neighbors with pucker-perfect kosher dills.

There were dozens of small family pickle operations in the early 1900s, but one South Portland pickler achieved widespread commercial success, beginning in the 1930s. Although Sarah Neusihin died in 1970 and her company was sold about 10 years later, the unparalleled crunch and spiciness of Mrs. Neusihin’s pickles live on in the memories of people who bought them by the jar or enjoyed them at restaurants such as Yaw’s Top Notch, Jolly Joan’s, Henry Thiele’s, Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlours and The Cheerful Tortoise.

In the basement of her house at 420 S.W. College St. (now a restaurant, Alexandria Mediterranean Cuisine), Neusihin fermented tons of local cucumbers in a salted water brine, following the family recipe she brought from Russia in about 1920. Her son, Irving, a mechanical engineer, made all the processing equipment, and the whole family pitched in.

“My brother says he thinks he still smells garlic on his fingers,” says Lisa Neusihin, 50, Sarah’s granddaughter, who peeled countless garlic cloves throughout her childhood. She keeps her grandmother’s precious recipe alive by making pickles for friends and family.

Steinfeld’s Pickles bought Mrs. Neusihin’s, but both companies were sold in 1999 to Dean Specialty Foods in Wisconsin. The recipes and the sourcing of the produce were changed. For example, vinegar was added to the pickles now bearing the Mrs. Neusihin label.

“Vinegar!” exclaims Lisa Neusihin in horror. “My grandmother would be rolling over in her grave 150 times!”

Steinfeld’s began in 1922 so Henry and Barbara Steinfeld would not have to waste their garden crop of cucumbers and cabbages. First they sold their extra produce at the old downtown Portland farmers market and door-to-door in their St. Johns neighborhood. Then the couple started making and selling pickles and sauerkraut. The company was owned and operated by three generations of Steinfelds before it was sold.